Punishers Ending letter
Players and Friends, Over the last year, I have gone from a college student with lots of free time, to an employed developer who is spending all his mental and physical power to create the best next-generation games he can. I have found myself slowly and surely slipping farther and farther away from Blade Mistress. I've tried bringing in Admins with more time and energy, but alas, the game itself needs development. I have come to the hard conclusion that it is time for Blade Mistress to close it's doors. There are many features that have not been implemented, that I wanted to create. The possibilities were literally endless. On June 1st, 2006, the server will be shutting down. I will archive and save all the data, as my idea for a version that you can play locally with your character data is not out of reach. This was one of the features I was going to release only to P2P players, and if time permits, it will still be the case. Blade Mistress was a success because of players and fans like you. The game was setup by a man with a vision, who's sole purpose was to make a game for gamers, by gamers. Eventually, he brought on a college kid with high aspirations and grand ideas for the game. Over the years, the game has blossomed into a player created fantasy world that people found hard to leave. I loved every moment I spent in it, and my most memorable and rewarding times were just being in game with the players. Many recent events have moved me towards this decision. Another website on our webserver was hacked. The hackers corruped and injected code into many files and folders, including the Blade Mistress forums, bringing them down. Some teenagers with access to TCP/IP packet sniffers and Google Search thought they could program (and were better programmers than myself). They were able to find (and exploit) one of the many bugs relating to our internet traffic. Unfortunately, a lot of these bugs were around since the beginning, as the creators wanted to make a game that was fun, and didn't spend the extra months it would have taken a team of two to secure and test every possible case. I never had the time to go through and read all the hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I agree with their decision, as it brought the game along to the players quicker. I'm sorry the few people couldn't understand and appreciate this, and hopefully in the future they will see exactly what it takes to make a game of this scale. All in all, the game has been a highlight of my life. I'm still young, and don't plan to stop developing games any time soon. I'm hoping to be able to release more stuff for free to the internet. I unfortunately just don't have the time to give a MMORPG the love, care, and code it needs. Best Wishes, Punisher
Players and Friends, Over the last year, I have gone from a college student with lots of free time, to an employed developer who is spending all his mental and physical power to create the best next-generation games he can. I have found myself slowly and surely slipping farther and farther away from Blade Mistress. I've tried bringing in Admins with more time and energy, but alas, the game itself needs development. I have come to the hard conclusion that it is time for Blade Mistress to close it's doors. There are many features that have not been implemented, that I wanted to create. The possibilities were literally endless. On June 1st, 2006, the server will be shutting down. I will archive and save all the data, as my idea for a version that you can play locally with your character data is not out of reach. This was one of the features I was going to release only to P2P players, and if time permits, it will still be the case. Blade Mistress was a success because of players and fans like you. The game was setup by a man with a vision, who's sole purpose was to make a game for gamers, by gamers. Eventually, he brought on a college kid with high aspirations and grand ideas for the game. Over the years, the game has blossomed into a player created fantasy world that people found hard to leave. I loved every moment I spent in it, and my most memorable and rewarding times were just being in game with the players. Many recent events have moved me towards this decision. Another website on our webserver was hacked. The hackers corruped and injected code into many files and folders, including the Blade Mistress forums, bringing them down. Some teenagers with access to TCP/IP packet sniffers and Google Search thought they could program (and were better programmers than myself). They were able to find (and exploit) one of the many bugs relating to our internet traffic. Unfortunately, a lot of these bugs were around since the beginning, as the creators wanted to make a game that was fun, and didn't spend the extra months it would have taken a team of two to secure and test every possible case. I never had the time to go through and read all the hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I agree with their decision, as it brought the game along to the players quicker. I'm sorry the few people couldn't understand and appreciate this, and hopefully in the future they will see exactly what it takes to make a game of this scale. All in all, the game has been a highlight of my life. I'm still young, and don't plan to stop developing games any time soon. I'm hoping to be able to release more stuff for free to the internet. I unfortunately just don't have the time to give a MMORPG the love, care, and code it needs. Best Wishes, Punisher